


Family

by Mitsuky



Series: Awakening [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional reunion, Gen, Hephaestus is a good father, Olympian's shenanigans, Wesson missed his da
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24563023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mitsuky/pseuds/Mitsuky
Summary: Tony has too many things to do and too little time to do then at. So, what better way to deal with the problem than passing it al- err... It was a plan he thought of a long time ago, putting Pepper in charge, officially. She's better at CEO-ing that Tony anyway.So, while the paperwork is underway, he pays a visit to dear old dad, spends time with him, and gets a much-needed upgrade of his heart. Wesson, of course, is happy he's back and sticks to him like a leech, not that he minds.He can't wait for his oldest child meeting with the rest. He already knows Wesson will be a good influence for Jarvis.
Relationships: Tony Stark & Hephaestus, Tony Stark & Wesson
Series: Awakening [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1769674
Kudos: 56





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> Hum...
> 
> This is shaping up to be a long ride.
> 
> Where did this come from, I have no idea.
> 
> I don't know if you've noticed but, I use the appropriate name depending on what he looks like at the moment; if the mortal visage is up, then it's Tony, but if it is the other around and there are golden eyes and fire then it's Hephrodistus.

Tony looked down at the bench in his workshop. Pieces of the armour where all around, in need to be fixed. The tablet from the company lights with a small red dot, he swipes it on and an alert of over a thousand messages, mostly from R&D, appears and he scowls at it. One screen has an unfinished Mark V in it, the other the Mark VI. He has six missed calls from Pepper in his phone, two from Rhodey, and a message from Happy. U prepares a smoothie, without the lid of the mixer, and everything turns a mess… DUM-E appears with a mop and a bucket, the foamy water falls to the floor when the chassis of the bot hits it. Right, he planned on updating their bodies a few weeks ago. He reclines on the chair, sighing.

“Jarvis, update.”

“Fifteen percent of palladium poisoning, Sir.”

Pieces of the broken Mark III are still on the bench, he has a ton of emails to read, Mark V and VI aren’t finished, he has now eight missed calls from Pepper and he hasn't answered to Rhodey or Happy yet, U tries to help DUM-E but breaks the mop, he still needs to start working on the schematics for the bots new chassis’. He stands with determination and ignores the complete chaos that is his...everything, and walks to the middle of the room.

“Jarvis, talk with my legal team and tell them to compile the needed paperwork to put Pepper as the new CEO, but don’t tell her about it yet. I don’t have enough time; I need more time.” Tony sighs, “Also, assemble Mark IV.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The armour hugs him and Tony prepares to leave, “If anyone asks, I’m on holiday and I don't know when I’ll be back. But I estimate two week at most if I don’t find any problems.”

“Where are you going, Sir?” Jarvis asks with worry.

Tony remains silent while the armour finishes assembling. The faceplate lowers and Jarvis connects with the suit. “...It’s time for a family reunion, J. But I’m going alone this time, sorry buddy. I’ll introduce you to your brother when I return with him… and a fix for the palladium conundrum.”

“Should I prepare one of the spare rooms?”

“Yes, oh... he likes red, you should put reds in his room.”

“Of course, he does… What else can I expect from a son of yours, Sir.”

“If you think I’m bad, wait until you meet your big bro,” Tony snorts.

“I’ll hold my breath.”

“Prepare route, Greece.”

“Preparing route… Safe travels, Sir.”

“Here goes nothing…”

* * *

The flight to Greece is nothing out of the ordinary, the weather is fair and Jarvis keeps silent. The problematic bits start when he arrives at Mount Olympus. The place is a very famous touristic spot, many hikers like to take a walk around the mountain and the path is very close to the nexus, besides, he arrives in Greece at night but there are still some people around taking pictures and recording their surroundings with cameras, so he has to wait for a while. Just crossing the wards protecting the nexus will cause a ripple to form in apparently nothing but air, then activating it to travel to Olympus will affect any electronic devices for anyone close by, so he has to be patient for now.

He lands a fair distance from the nexus, getting of the suit before alerting Jarvis about what he’s doing, and walks the remaining distance with the suit floating at his back and cloaked by magic. The only remaining people when he approaches is a couple with their backs at him, so he simply walks into the warded space and lands his armour on the floor next to him.

The thick white marble slab sitting in the middle of the otherwise empty mountain has an engraving of a sun, with an eye in the middle, not unlike the depiction of the _Magnum Chaos_ from the Renaissance artist Lotto something. There are many symbols on the borders of the circle, only important to those who understand magic, and no matter how long the thing has been there it’s unblemished. Tony takes a deep breath and lets fire burn the human image, clothes and physical appearance changing, and not for the first time he thinks of mahou shoujo… He steps on the slab with a snort, preparing his magic and creating symbols in the air, activating the ones carved at his feet; the shine gets brighter by the seconds until his surroundings are nothing but a golden cumulus of light and then he’s flying, planets and stars passing at high speed all around him, the view as breath taking as the first time he used this method of travel.

He steps out of the golden tunnel, arriving in an empty temple with tall pillars and hard white marble everywhere. He rolls his eyes at it, unimpressed. Olympians and their marble… Many complain about Asgardians and gold, but his people can easily compete with them with their obsession with marble.

“Daichi, Taavi,” Hephrodistus greets the guards at the top of the stairs. They return his nod with a respectful bow as he steps down, eyes wide and curious.

He crosses paths with many others along the way, but avoids the most used halls and pathways so he can get as quickly as possible to his temple and avoid other Gods at the same time. It’s an arduous task, but he doesn’t have all of his memories yet and he doesn’t want to confront the others without being able to act at his hundred percent. He enjoys the smell of flowers though, feeling almost heady by the time he steps into his temple with all of the pollen and sweet fragrances inundating the air. _Grandmother outdid herself_ , he thinks just as he gets crushed under a heavy weight, but relaxes almost immediately as scales graze his skin and he laughs in realization.

“Wesson!” Hephrodistus turned around only to get his face full of smoke and the smell of sulphur. “Ugh, boy, calm down…”

“Father, I missed you,” his son purred, holding tightly onto him as Hephrodistus got to his feet.

“I missed you too, my little fireball.”

Big golden eyes with a slanted pupil looked at him as the long and slender neck covered in red scales moved to confront Hephrodistus face to face. “ _Where were you?_ You left and didn’t say anything! I asked grandpa but he wouldn’t talk. And the others also avoided my questions. I was so desperate that I tried talking to _Zeus_ , but he got angry only by the mention of your name so I left him alone. Then I tried visiting Tartarus again but the guards wouldn’t let me in.” The dragon wrapped his limbs around him again and Hephrodistus stumbled under the weight. “You’re not leaving me again for so long, all by myself.”

“Don’t worry kid, you’re coming back with me this time. And about what happened... I know as much as you do right now. Apparently, Zeus blocked my memories and powers for some reason, and threw me at Terra. I haven’t recovered everything yet.”

“It must have been something really bad, Zeus was so mad after you disappeared that you wouldn’t believe it!”

“Do you think you can let me move a little, brat?” Hephrodistus asked shrugging his shoulders and Wesson shapeshifts a second later, turning smaller and wrapping on his back, his long neck perching over Hephrodistus’s head and his wings hanging to each side.

Hephrodistus walks to the back of the temple and descends the stairs to the living room that saw many of his parties over the years since he turned a hundred and earned a title and his own place. The second set of stairs lands him on the game room so he goes lower still, the swimming pool, the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom pass by and finally, he arrives in his workshop. He knows he has many treasures hidden in a safe room, in a hidden corner of the room, but he doesn’t remember what he has there. He grew up with his father, helping the man and learning from him, getting used to the heat of the forge and creating the habit of safekeeping special ores to use them in his own personal projects when he felt like going down to the workshop and hole up there for weeks at a time.

The ward melts under his fingers when he touches the door, he opens it and there are so many things inside that he doesn’t remember, that he’s pretty sure he’ll need to make a damn catalogue to be able to find anything in the future.

“What are you looking for?” Wesson asks, startling Hephrodistus from his contemplation.

“Well, I don’t have all of my memories so...I can’t recognize half of this shit,” Hephrodistus answers with a pout and kicks a sword to the side, the gems all over it shines under the light of the magical orbs floating around the ceiling of his vault.

“That specific _‘shit’_ was a gift from a princess we met in some random planet a few hundred years ago,” Wesson snickers.

Hephrodistus blinks down at the sword, “Huh, no wonder it’s so gaudy.” He hums and looks down at his chest. “I have a problem with this thing here,” Hephrodistus taps the reactor and Wes moves his neck around to take a better look. “When I was but a simple and powerless human, I had an accident with a bomb getting too close to my face. It exploded and the shrapnel got lodged in my chest. There are still small pieces of metal there. Don’t worry, I plan to get that fixed before leaving,” he reassures the dragon before he has time to start worrying over his health. “The thing is, the arc reactor is made with a palladium core at the moment and it’s poisoning my body, I need to find a replacer, but nothing humans have can be used for it.”

“Why don’t you just get rid of it? What does it do?”

“Right now, it powers a magnet in my chest to keep the remaining pieces of shrapnel from tearing into my heart. Now that I recovered my powers, it wouldn’t kill me if I didn’t have the magnet, but it’d be really painful. Beyond that, I’ve been studying it and I can use it as a second source of magic. After I visit the healers, I plan to use the reactor like a battery. The energy of it functions in parallel with magic without problems, so I can store my magic inside when I’m not using it and have a backup if I need to do something big.”

“That’s great, da! Maybe grandpa can help you with finding a new core for it? He’s been really sad since you left…”

Hephrodistus snorts, “Are we talking about the same man here? Hephaestus, sad?”

“He smells sad,” Wes says twitching his tiny cute nose.

Hephrodistus smiles fondly at him, “Ah, right. Let’s go visit dad then. Can you fly us there? I can’t manage to teleport yet without bouts of nausea.”

“Okay, da.”

Wes rests his head on top of Hephrodistus’s and dozes there, purring all the while as Hephrodistus walks them out of his temple and around the residential area until they reach an open space big enough for Wes to grow to his full size. He’s only as big as a two stories tall house, but it’s much more than Hephrodistus remembered, and as he stares, the dragon preens under the attention.

With an amused snort, Hephrodistus jumps on the dragon’s back and pats him twice, “You’re such a peacock.”

“I’m no bird,” Wes snorts red flames through his nose, “I’m a mighty dragon!” He growls and takes flight.

“So, how were things during my absence?”

Wes grunts with another bout of flames coming out of his snout. “Zeus and Hades are at it again. In the last two years, grandpa had to rebuild the pantheon hall from scratch once and the amphitheatre got it bad on a few occasions too. Apollo threw a fit because their fight interrupted his performance the second time. Also, Persephone kicked Zeus out of the Pit twice by herself, the first time because he broke something a friend gave her, and the second time because they had visits when Zeus stormed in. The rumour is that Hades is angrier at his brother for getting the wife unhappy than for harassing him for who knows what tickled Zeus’ fancy wrong this time.”

Hephrodistus laughed until his belly ached, “Ah, if only I was there to see that! Grandma sure turns into a Fury when you get her going.”

Wes giggles throatily, “She sure does! Zeus sported a limp for days the second time she got mad, and nor Aceso or Asclepius would heal him in fear of Persephone’s wrath landing on them next.”

“Serves him right...”

“Here we are, da,” Wes comments landing smoothly in front of the Hall of Hephaestus.

Hephrodistus jumps down and takes a breath to calm his nerves. Wes purring centres him more than anything else in the wake of the feelings pumping inside him though. And if he’s being truthful with himself, he’s a little scared about what his father is going to say when he sees him. Because Zeus surely had a good reason to kick him out. Or at least Hephrodistus hopes so. His grandfather, he likes to think, isn’t that much of a dick as to kick him away from home for some... silly rea s o n.

Uh...okay, scratch that, he’s dreading hearing the reason no matter what.

* * *

Hephrodistus walked the rest of the way into the temple and found his father hammering on his underground forge while sweat plastered his golden hair to his face and fell in big drops from his chin. The walls, the heat of the forge, the weapons, the man, it was all the same. A sense of nostalgia stole Hephrodistus’s breath away as he stood on the entrance and observed his father at work. He couldn’t help comparing Hephaestus and Howard, two men hardened and with tough personalities, but were Howard was like that with strangers and family alike, Hephaestus isn’t.

The moment his father notices the fresh air and looks to the door, in Hephrodistus’s direction, a broad smile blooms in his face. He rushes to his side and booms a loud greeting, crushing Hephrodistus’s weight against him as he laughs and cries. Hephrodistus returns the embrace with a warm smile and a few tears of his own, thanking the Fates for giving him a nice father in his first life because the second one left much to be desired from him in the fatherhood department. Hephrodistus knows better now and recognises that Howard was an alcoholic and abusive father, always demeaning Tony, asking for more, looking at him and only expressing not-good-enough with his eyes, breaking Tony every step of the way, making him feel like a failure, like a waste of time and space, like he should give more, more, and more; it was never enough with him. And more importantly, the man gave Tony Stark so many daddy issues and complexes that it wasn’t funny.

So, Hephrodistus hugs Hephaestus and bears with the hovering, the questions, the worried glances, the many repeated questions, and the talk of _feelings_...but that last one only after sharing a big goblet of ambrosia with his father and getting the lightheaded feeling of drinking too much of it. He tells his father _everything_ , leaving nothing behind. That is one of the things he loves about his father the most, he can tell him everything and freely confide all of his doubts and worries with him, without the fear of being judged and demeaned for showing weakness. And of course, Hephaestus rages in silence and waits for Hephrodistus to finish his tale, giving him another crushing embrace by the end and swearing he’ll always be there for his son, as usual.

The only reason Hephaestus doesn’t storm earth and breaks it is because a) Hephrodistus likes it, b) Howard is long since dead, and c) Pepper, Rhodey, Happy and his three new grandsons also live there.

During the next few days, Hephrodistus spends all of his time enjoying his uninterrupted time with his father. He blows the old God’s mind when he explains to him what Adamantium is and how the mortals created it, started a long and winded discussion about the strongest elements and metals in relation to his need to replace the arc reactor, and as usual Hephaestus huffs and puffs while claiming ‘seriously, son, Dragonite is the strongest metal!’ but Hephrodistus’s mind is made up about liking Uru best since he can infuse it with magic, unlike his father’s choice.

Both work side by side, remembering old times and laughing, and they create a new encasing for Hephrodistus’s heart out of golden Uru, with a new design covering it of an eight-pointed star.

“You’re a God of Creation, son. No matter what Zeus says, and I love father, but he’s a hard-headed prick about this and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince me of the contrary. You are able to create souls, Hephrodistus. _Souls._ That is a feat to be proud of, son. Don’t let anyone tell you what your limits are or who you are. Let’s not talk anymore about this, the star stays in your heart as your symbol, you’ve more than earn it for every AI you’ve given life to.”

Hephrodistus acquiesced to his old man’s wishes in the end, accepting and adopting the star as his with a tired sigh, and as they put the glowing blue triangle as the new source of power for the reactor, his symbol as a fire element user, he smiled in satisfaction at the end result. The golden Uru—that he had in his vault thanks to his hoarding son insisting on keeping it—gleamed in his hands as Hephrodistus twirled the finished product, the blue triangle of Infinium greeted him behind the hardened and magically reinforced stars-dust-crystal-cover. He doesn’t know how his father got his hands on the method used to create the Infinium, an element crafted after many years of study on the Infinity Gem of Space by a group of scholars almost a millennium ago, and he’s worried to ask, but he sure as hell isn’t going to complain that his father has it.

He just hopes his father didn’t go stealing Chaos’ journals again.


End file.
